William Tuckett's new ballet The Crucible is in some respects as deviant a reading of Arthur Miller's play as it could be. In place of a puritan community dressed in God-fearing browns and greys, Tuckett and his designer Ralph Steadman have clothed the citizens of Salem in garish fancy dress, while the set features a crazed cartoon of a church set against neon-lit skies. Steadman's aim is to show the bedlam that overtakes Salem when it becomes gripped by terror of witchcraft and it chimes powerfully with the St Vitus madness which afflicts some of Tuckett's best choreography - the epileptic energy of its group dances and the mad menace of its processionals (all set to music by Charles Ives). Unfortunately, though, the visual concept creates a busyness on stage which becomes fatally chaotic when it is allied to the overambitious detail of Tuckett's storytelling.

Even though he has compressed Miller's play into one act, Tuckett still tries to communicate too much of its incidental action. Scenes that aren't necessary to his own narrative are retained as the briefest of dance encounters. These not only baffle anyone who has not read the text, they obscure the mainspring of the ballet's action - the relationship between John and Elizabeth Procter and the manipulative Abigail.

Tuckett actually paints this relationship vividly, contrasting the transparent, anguished emotion of Elizabeth's moves (Zenaida Yanowsky) with the sluttishbut queenly demeanour of Abigail (Sarah Wildor) and showing John (Irek Mukhamedov) moving with increasing desperation between them. If the triangle had been set up straight away, the rest of the complex story might have slotted into place around it. As it is, we have to figure it out as painfully as everything else. There's no question that Tuckett has considerable narrative gifts - the manic glitter of his priests, and the handwringing uncertainty of Elizabeth are evidence of a lively imagination. He just needs a good librettist to sort out his plot.

The Crucible is part of an American-themed programme flanked by George Balanchine's Serenade (1934) and Jerome Robbins's The Concert (1956). Wednesday's performance of Serenade, led by a magisterial Darcey Bussell, was excellent, its New World spaciousness inflected with a distinctively British lyricism. The Concert was a hoot, with a fine cast led by Sylvie Guillem making her debut as a comedian. The ballet's jokes work only within a rigorously disciplined performance and the sight of Guillem's pristine technique being subjected to slapstick nonsense was extra- ordinary. Luke Heydon as her partner was a particularly inspired cross between Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau.

 The Crucible is at the Royal Opera House, London WC2 (0171-304 4000), till May 4.